The Vampire Diaries actor and soon-to-be dad got his first feline, Tiger, when he was just three years old. During their time together, Tiger was hit by a car, leading Somerhalder’s parents to spend “every dollar they had on a cat.”

The orange kitty pulled through the accident and taught his three-year-old owner a valuable lesson in the process.

“It was the first time I learned about healing, and my parents’ first time trying to explain how things change in the body. I got this amazing anatomy lesson,” Somerhalder told PEOPLE.

How did he help Tiger’s healing process? “I snuggled that dude! He was my size, he was huge.”

Ian Somerhalder/Instagram

Today, Somerhalder is co-parent, along with wife Nikki Reed, to a whole ark of animals, including two cats, plus a rotating cast of foster kittens.

It’s caring for these kittens, many of them orphaned and in desperate need of care to survive, that have given him a taste of fatherhood.

“To get up in the middle of the night to bottle feed eight kittens that would die without you, it gives you a sense of what it’s like to care for something that depends on you for its survival,” Somerhalder said about his duties as a cat dad. “It’s a very special thing. It’s a great beginner’s course.”

He is also familiar with the messes that come along with parenting.

“I’ve learned to smile through cleaning endless amounts of poop and pee,” he said about the dirtier side of fostering kittens.

Somerhalder admits that looking after baby cats isn’t quite equal to raising a child, but there are “endless reasons that compassion for an animal can literally change the course of your life.”

For him, caring for animals has giving him the “love and patience” needed to be a dad.